Pop and Politics

Pop & Politics talks about the results the morning after

On Wednesday November 3rd, the Pop & Politics live event at WNYC’s Greene Space brought together panelists, audiences and web viewers for a fascinating discussion about how race, anger and the economy affected the outcome of the November 2010 midterm elections. Guests included actress Rosie Perez (visit her arts organization here ), blogger Reihan Salam with The National Review, Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Perry, youth activist Erica Williams, and WNYC’s The Takeaway reporter Todd Zwillich.

You can watch video of the entire show below. Or click on the audio player below to stream the show now.

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You can also subscribe to our podcast to download an MP3 of the show: or . We also had a lively on-line conversation; click on the Cover It Live player below to scroll through a recap of the show highlights and viewer comments. And finally, listeners from the audience and the web prepared questions for Farai and the panelists, but there wasn’t time to get to them all. The questions are after the jump, take a look and join the discussion.

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Stories From the Road: Voting For Pedro

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  Voting for Pedro

18-year old Pedro Lopez left his girlfriend and a comfortable existence in Phoenix to register voters in Yuma, one of Arizona’s most conservative towns. Spurred by passage of Arizona’s anti-immigration law SB-1070, he was also motivated by what he saw as apathy on the part of non-registered Hispanics. Pop and Politics went door-to-door with Pedro to see if he was having any success. Pedro’s plea to register resonated particularly powerfully for one young potential voter he met.

Voting The Bums Out, Again and Again

What happens when you vote? You get a certain amount of say over who takes office. But what happens once they take office? How do you stay in touch with the person you elected and hold them accountable?

Well, that’s where the wheels fall off the wagon… Most people do not have consistent access to their political representatives. You can send an email or a letter, or try to set up an appointment, or go to a rally. But our mechanisms of delivering detailed critiques or instructions on policy are usually limited either by access to the lawmakers or information about what’s actually happening on Capitol Hill or your State House. Continue Reading…

Who Exactly is the Tea Party?

Pundits, politicians and the press continue to speculate about the effects the Tea Party will have on tomorrow’s midterm elections. But who exactly is the Tea Party anyway?  To provide some background, we’ve pulled together links describing the Tea Party and its mission and core values.

Read a short history of the Tea Party and its major founding figures, courtesy of Slate. Check out The New York Times’ map of the Congressional and Senate Tea Party races across the country along with the latest polling. Take a look at the Washington Posts’ slideshow of must-watch Tea Party candidates, Politico’s choices of Tea Party candidates to watch, and ABC’s list of Tea Party-backed candidates. Newsweek has a photo gallery of the leading Tea Party backed candidates.

The Washington Post reports on the organization and disparate nature of Tea Parties across the nation, and the New York Times shows some of the loose factions within the movement. The Atlantic makes some predictions about how prominent Tea Party candidates will fare in this election. The 2010 election isn’t even over, and already the Tea Party is affecting the 2012 race.  NPR reports on the post-election future of The Tea Party.

And don’t forget our video interview with Allen West, Tea Party favorite in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.

New Ruling, New Voters

Our second Pop and Politics special, set in Arizona, deals with, among other things, the diverse and growing Latino voting population and younger voters… both part of a broad look at how the American electorate is changing. And courts are clarifying a crucial voting law. From Politico.com.

A six-year-old Arizona law requiring that voters prove their citizenship in order to register to vote was struck down Tuesday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the portion of the law requiring that voters present identification before casting their ballot, part of a proposition passed in 2004 amid concerns that illegal immigrants may try to vote in state and federal elections.

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“The Border Will Always Be Porous”

When Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed SB-1070, a bill that required local police officers to enforce federal immigration law, Arizona became the flash point for a national debate about how best to deal with illegal immigration. On July 28th, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked key provision of the law from taking effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco is set to hear oral arguments on Monday in a case brought by the U.S. Justice Department against Arizona.

The number of immigrants arrested for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has steadily declined from over 600,000 people a year in 2000, to around 200,000 this year, a drop in 17% from last year. In spite of the decline, the issue of illegal immigration loomed large as the Pop and Politics team arrived in Phoenix in late September. Our first stop: a jail in the desert outside of Phoenix.

The Truth About That Danged Fence

It’s hard to argue against the idea of a border fence designed to keep out undocumented immigrants. Those who do risk sounding like they are for illegal immigration. John McCain probably knew that when he recorded a campaign ad urging the government to “complete the danged fence.”

But in reality, there has never been a comprehensive plan to build a physical fence along all 1,952 miles of the US-Mexican border. What the Bush administration DID do in 2006 as part of the Secure Border Initiative was to begin construction of a patchwork virtual and physical fence along the Southwest border states, called SBI-net.  Since then, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has received $4.4 billion in funding for the effort. But the project has been plagued by cost over-runs, and criticized by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for poor management of and performance by the main contractor, Boeing. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano froze funding to the project in January and is close to a decision that may entirely kill the fence.

While in Arizona reporting on issues of immigration, we visited a small section of the border in Nogales, Arizona and spoke with Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada about the fence’s effectiveness in halting illegal immigration.

Will Latino Voters Tip the Political Balance in 2010?

In the presidential election of 2008, candidate Barack Obama captured 67% of the Latino vote, far above the 31% captured by John McCain. The political landscape has drastically changed since then. We’ve been through a near meltdown of the global financial system, a massive government bail-out of the same institutions that started the crisis, a government takeover of the auto industry, a continuing foreclosure crisis and unemployment that threatens to break 10%. Add the two continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its safe to say that President Obama’s popularity isn’t what it once was.

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Except among Latinos. A survey done by the Pew Hispanic Center this summer indicates that 63% of registered Latinos approve of the job Obama is doing, well above the 47% among the rest of the nation.  Farai spoke by phone with Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director of the Pew Hispanic Center and an author of the report about some of its surprising results. Listen to the interview above, or download a transcript of the interview here.

“Race beyond the Race,” Blogger/Tweeter Conversation with Farai Chideya

Growing up Muslim in an age of Islamophobia

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  Growing up Muslim American in an age of Islamophobia

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States has had at best an uneasy relationship with Islam. As this year’s midterm elections approach, that relationship is again taking center stage, with politicians like Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharon Angle asserting that Sharia law has taken over in some parts of the United States, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino running ads saying that the planned Islamic community center in New York is “a monument to those who attacked our country“, and ex-Alaskan governor Sarah Palin tweeting that the mosque is an “unnecessary provocation.”

But passions over Islam in America became truly inflamed when Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center threatened to burn copies of the Koran to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Pop and Politics crew arrived in Gainesville, Florida on September 10th, a day before the the planned burning. In the midst of the worldwide media maelstrom, we met the Qamar family, moderate Muslims trying to convince their fellow Americans that being Muslim does not equal being a terrorist.